I think you'll find it was the older generation that blew up the deficit. It was the older generation who received tens, sometimes hundreds, of thousands of pounds more in public services that they paid in tax and passed this debt onto the next generation. And it'll be the older generation who insist their final salary schemes are honoured despite not contributing enough over their working lives to fund them properly whilst the younger generation's pensions are slashed.

Classically liberal British youth? Young people in the UK are rejecting the welfare state in favor of personal responsibility?

Sure they are... Now put down the crack pipe and try to get a grip on reality.

British young people (like their American counterparts) are embracing license / libertinism, not libertarianism. They are (implicitly) demanding unrestricted freedom along with an unlimited welfare state so that they don't have to deal with the consequences.

Sure there pro-libertarian young people in the U.S. They support the drugs, sex, gay rights, anti-war message. However, classical libertarianism is a doctrine of strict personal responsibility that completely rejects the welfare state.

Any widespread support for abolishing the welfare state among the under-30 crowd? No. What I said before still stands.

"British young people (like their American counterparts) are embracing license / libertinism, not libertarianism. They are (implicitly) demanding unrestricted freedom along with an unlimited welfare state so that they don't have to deal with the consequences.

Really? Is that what you think? I can't speak for Britain, but the Libertarian party (the American party that espouses Classical Liberalism) is quite popular among American young people, and Libertarians do very well with young people in the polls, unlike the Republicans who promote a sort of faux liberalism. It's an ideology that offers us an end to the war on terror (a.k.a. the war on anything that moves), the war on drugs and reduced government meddling in our everyday lives (be it social or economic meddling or the modern surveillance state). I see a lot of young people getting behind those ideas of peace and prosperity.

This issues at hand are the political and economic values of the young. My comments are in that vein. When the Economist publishes an article on public support for the elderly, I will comment accordingly.